5 easy ways to say goodbye to email overload and burnout

We are in the midst of the big quit, with a record number of employees quitting their jobs.

More than 24 million people left their jobs in the second half of 2021; around 4.3 million people in December alone.

And one of the main drivers of this massive labor exodus?

Exhaustion!

Employees are tired of feeling overwhelmed by their work. Therefore, if you want to keep top talent in your company, it's important to do everything you can to help your team avoid this overload, including managing their emails.

But how exactly do you do it? Let's look at five tips to help your team master their inboxes, avoid burnout, and improve employee retention in your organization.

Why is overcoming email overload so important?

First of all. Before we dive into how you can help your team beat email overload, let's quickly dive into what email overload is and why helping your team overcome email overload is absolutely essential. avoid.

As the name suggests, email overload is the experience of being completely overwhelmed by your inbox. When you can no longer control the flow of email through your inbox, many more emails arrive each day than you could ever sort and respond to. Over time, the number of unread, unsorted, and unanswered emails keeps increasing until the number is so high that you feel stressed every time you open your inbox.

If this sounds stressful, that's because it is. And when your team is struggling with email overload, it can have a variety of undesirable effects, including:

Decreased productivity. Dealing with email overload takes time and energy that your team can devote to more critical tasks. This can lead to a drop in overall productivity. Missing important emails. When your team is dealing with hundreds (or even thousands!) of emails, important messages can easily get lost in the clutter, or they may struggle to find an important email when needed. This can lead to many negative business outcomes, such as losing a key customer or missing an important meeting. Higher risk of burnout. This is not called flooding emails for no reason. The email overload is overwhelming. And when your team is constantly overwhelmed, they are at greater risk of burnout and you are at greater risk of losing them in a hostile work environment.

Letting emails spiral out of control can have a serious impact on your team. But if you support your team properly and help them manage their emails, it can have many positive effects, including:

Increased productivity. When your team isn't worried about clutter in their inboxes, they can better focus on the work that matters. This increases individual and collective productivity. More time and less risk of burnout. Dealing with a cluttered inbox takes time. By eliminating email overload, you're giving your team time back, helping them feel less overwhelmed (and less likely to burn out) overall. A greater ability to disconnect at the end of the day. For many people, just knowing how to sort through and respond to hundreds of emails can make it hard to relax outside of office hours. Allowing your team to shut down after hours makes it easier to disconnect, which is essential to work-life balance. 5 tips to avoid being overwhelmed by emails

If you want to create a productive and positive work environment and retain top talent in your company, helping your team avoid email overload is non-negotiable. But how do you do that?

1. Set clear parameters for how and when to use email

Inboxes can quickly spiral out of control when employees don't know how and when to use email. Without clear settings, employees can easily send too many emails, send emails too frequently, and send emails to the wrong contact. You get the picture.

Without clear email settings, you can find employees:

Sending multiple emails when they should be contacted through your company's email platform Hit "reply all" on emails with multiple cc's Sending emails outside office hours Sending multiple emails back and forth instead of taking advantage of available technology (for example, sending multiple emails to schedule a meeting when your company uses scheduling...